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Smithing Guide By Grodark
''' Smithing Guide Part 1: 0-60 '''= ''' [[Smithing Guide By Grodark Part 2|Smithing Guide Part 2: 60-100]] ''' __NOEDITSECTION__ Preface Welcome to my Smithing Guide, I hope you take advantage of the time and effort I put forth in this guide. From my experience with leveling, I have compiled a complete list of Synths that will get you to 100. I spent a lot of time when I first started crafting in FFXI trying to figure out Crafting. Learning how to level Smithing, and what to craft for skillups. I wasted a lot of time just trying to figure it out, and I wrote this guide to help everyone else out. The Wiki most definitely helped everyone out by providing public access to Smithing Recipes, but deciding which recipe makes a good skillup item is another story. I have compiled a complete list of Synths that will get you to 100. Unfortunately, I can't push you to reach that goal; you are going to have an empty bank more than once. It is however, my pleasure to give you a practical guide to minimize the bankruptcy and maximize the profits you will be earning. You'll be frustrated by the lack of skillups, the loss per synth, the lack of materials, and even the flood of items on the AH. Just be conscious of the economy, and try your best not to flood the markets. Please remember to take your time while you are crafting, enjoy the process and don't let the temptation of buying gil sway you. Losing your hard work because you were banned is the worst way to go; you lose out on time, money, effort, and even your reputation! Introduction Unfortunately, you can't just start off and start synthing. There is a lot of information you'll need to understand and most of it is just basic knowledge. If you know, or think you know everything about crafting I still hope you will read through this section. I'll be offering tips that you may not see others so willing to give away. Leveling Amateur - Level 1 to 10 There are two ways to make Bronze Ingots, the way above (Recommended) or you can use [[:Beastcoin]]s x 4. Since you can buy Copper Ore from the Airship NPCs, and Tin Ore from Guild Merchants it really is pointless to spend time farming or money buying Beastcoins. If you have a lot of spare beastcoins you can use those to level, but that's the only reason I could see for using them. You should have approximately 3 stacks of Bronze Ingots by the time you are done leveling to 2. Since you will be processing Bronze Ingots into Sheets and then Scales, it's best to produce a large number of Ingots in the beginning so you don't have to switch synths when you run out of Ingots. I suggest making 5-6 stacks of Bronze Ingots before you move onto Sheets This stage should take approximately 3 stacks of Bronze Ingots to get you to level 4, if you have followed my advice previously you should finish your synthing and move onto the next stage. On a side note, if Bronze Ingots or Sheets seem to be in demand on your server you can always synth a stack or two and sell them on the AH in the starting cities of Bastok or San d'Oria since both countries have Smithing Guilds. It couldn't hurt to make a bit of money on the side while you are leveling. Since you started off with a fixed amount of Ingots, you could possibly have to synth more to finish this stage. This is your first large level gap in Smithing. Since you can't get skillups off of breaks more than 5 levels from the synthesis cap, I suggest getting Advanced Synthesis Support until you reach level 6 or 7. It will help reduce the amount of breaks you get, and will save you money overall. Since absolutely no-one on my server wants Bronze Scales, I had to NPC every last one of mine. If your server is different count yourself lucky! You might get to sell a stack or two on the AH. Recruit - Level 11 to 20 The reason I recommend this recipe is if anyone is planning ahead, you can kill two birds with one stone. You will of course need to get level 10 Woodworking, and from there the Bronze Bolt Heads you make can be processed into Bronze Bolts. You will be able to get level 15 this way, and it will also help you level one of your sub-crafts for Smithing. If you are already past level 15 Woodworking proceed to the next recipe. This is a very easy, but can be a very frustrating synth to get skillups if you are in a rush. The reason is the limited amount of tin ore in the guilds. You should be able to move through the guild merchants if you need more Tin Ore to level, but the time it takes to buy and synth the material is very tedious. Getting stuck on a Guild Holiday is also rather annoying, and will disrupt your skillups. On a side note, it takes about 5 beats in 4/4 time to be able to purchase from the guild again. I suggest you get the timing down because you will be doing this again in the near future! This is one of your first profit synths, you can make a few every so often and increase your bank slowly. It really depends on how well you can merchant your goods. One thing to keep in mind, this is a Guild Point Item. If you can follow the patterns online, you will know when it is requested. When this happens, craft about 2 dozen of them and bazaar them next to the Union Representative [[Macuillie]]. The most expensive part of this synth is the fire crystals, so if you can cut down the costs by farming the crystals you’ll be in much better shape for profit synthing. Don’t flood the market; let them sell slowly to keep the price steady. I recommend getting a mule and using that for selling your goods. This also prevents you from getting harassed if someone notices you have taken over one of their profit synths. It’s unlikely, but I have gotten some unpleasant tells because I took over an item. Iron Ingot stacks on Kujata are a break even/loss synthing from Iron Ore, so your goal is not to make money. Your goal is to reduce costs so you break even. This means more crystal farming, because you’ll be breaking even. You'll need synthesis support from 15 to 17 to keep your breaks to a minimum. If you went ahead and synthed away on Aspis, you won't need support after level 17. If you do manage to HQ any of the Iron Ingots into Steel Ingots, save them for later use. Initiate - Level 21 to 30 You will be making your Iron Ingots into sheets the same way you did with Bronze Sheets. Don't worry too much about support because it's only 2 levels higher than you, but you should continue farming your crystals. You will need about 4-5 stacks of sheets to convert later into scales so you now have two options. Buy sheets off of the AH or make them yourself. Figure out what is cheaper, and do that. After you have finished producting your Iron Scales, you will have two options. One is a very unlikely choice for most, which is synthing [[Makibishi]]. If you do this, you will make profit from every sheet you have synthed. The key to this is, you must not flood the market. Also, this is a synth that will get better as you get higher Smithing. As long as you maintain the prices of Makibishi, you can always come back to this synth to make money. This can be a very painful synth sometimes, make sure you sell these on the weekends, because they don't always sell fast. If you want you can continue to make your own Iron Ingots, but on my server it is much simpler to buy them from the Guild or to buy them from the AH. The prices are very simliar during the week. After you have finished getting to 30 Smithing, make sure you take some time off to make some money. Get at least 100k ready to start the next stage, and Congratulations! This is a good alternate to Iron Chain but requires woodworking. I used this because my main is woodworking. They have better resell value than the Iron Chain and I just spread them out to my mules. [[User:Muertos|Muertos]] 21:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC) Novice - Level 31 to 40 This is a bridge synth, and should be taken to at least 31. You will need to sell these on the AH slowly, or convince an Alchemist to buy them from you (With a discount of course). I would encourage you to lower your costs of this synth by farming the beetle jaws, but I don't want to limit you to just that. Feel free to farm anything you would like to make up the costs of buying Beetle Jaws. Continue to profit from your other synths, and keep your bank stable. Take your time with this synth, because you can easily lose money if you rush. This should be a break even synth, with a slight chance of profit. You will be making a couple stacks of sheets and hopefully selling them on the AH. If you used your bridge synth like I hope you did, you shouldn't have to worry about breaks because you'll gain skillups either way. Try not to rush through this stage and don't flood the markets. Unfortunately, I can't call this a bridge synth like I did with Claws. You will be skilling up on these hopefully to the cap, and making money on the way. These sell for profit on my server, even if it is not much. It is always nice to break even skilling up. Apprentice - Level 41 to 50 This is another bridge synth, it's either this or Steel Scales. Since the scales sell for 15k/stack on my server I would not waste your money that way. Instead, this is a cheaper synth that is break even. You can sell these to the NPC for a little over 2,000 gil and only cost around 3,000 to make. It's not what everyone else is doing, but trust me it's the better option. This is another nice synth for skillups, you will break even or profit and that's always good. It's possible to make more money from this if you farm the lizard skins but again, I won't limit you to farming only the material listed. Farm whatever you would like and keep your money steadily increasing. This is a nice skillup item, due to the profitability of it. You can make about 3,000 gil a synth, and that's a big incentive to level on these. The downside is you need level 8 Woodworking, the higher you have it the better. If you do not have at least level 8, you will find a very high rate of breaks (This is considered break-synthing). It is mostly used on crafts where the end result is worth extremely less than the beginning materials. If you don't have the Woodworking skill, and would like another option proceed to the next synth. Also, these are used for getting the [[Mount Zhayolm]] map. So if you can merchant these effectively, you can make decent profits selling these to friends. This will be a slight loss synth, but is a simple bridge to bring you closer to your Darksteel Ingot recipe. You can either take these from 45 to 48 if you don't have the Woodworking skill or use it as a bridge from 47 to 48. Either way sell these to an Alchemist, or to the AH for slight loss. Journeyman - Level 51 to 60 Darksteel Ingots are a great synth for any level Smither, because It's an easy way to profit 10-20k per stack. You'll be making these for numerous synths to come so get used to buying Darksteel Ore, and possibly finding a supplier who will give you a large quantity of ores for a steady price. Sell these during the weekend to maximize profits, you can choose to mine your ores or just buy them either way you'll need a few stacks of Darksteel Ingots for your next synth. Darksteel Sheets sell close to the same price as Ingots, so you should be able to maintain your gil supply while leveling. Just use up the few stacks you saved and buy/synth more as needed. Also think about selling 1-2 stacks of darksteel ingots/sheets a week for some easy profit. You will be NPCing these as you make them, use your method of choice for obtaining the Iron Sheets. Buy the Leather Gloves and synth away. You'll be losing about 2-4k per synth depending on your method of obtaining the Iron Sheets. This is a bridge synth to get you to Nodowa, it may seem like a bad skillup item. But this is nothing compared to Darksteel Bolt Heads. Buy your Shinobi-gatana's from a Tenshodo Merchant, Norg will probably be the cheapest because of the low demand there. If you are only leveling Smithing as a sub, you'll finally be done with this synth, if you are on your way to 100 please continue to the next section of my guide for further tips and crafting recipes. This synth may seem like pure loss but believe it or not, this synth used to be a whole lot worse. It's actually pretty good now that the economy is this way. It is only about 1-2k loss per synth now which is amazing. ''' [[Smithing Guide By Grodark Part 2|Smithing Guide Part 2: 60-100]] '''